These Tampa Bay residents moved before a new hurricane season. They told us why.

[240B]

These Tampa Bay residents moved before a new hurricane season. They told us why.

Tampa Bay Times
By Michaela Mulligan and Max Chesnes
May 30, 2025

The Tampa Bay area’s vulnerabilities to hurricanes were peeled away last year, exposing painful recovery woes after the one-two punch from Helene and Milton.

While many people are staying and rebuilding, others have sold their properties and moved away — safe from the threat of hurricanes growing more dangerous from climate change.

They aren’t alone.

In the six months after Helene, home sales in flooded neighborhoods diverged from those in the rest of Pinellas County, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of real estate data and National Hurricane Center storm surge predictions.

About 8% more sales occurred in areas with the worst flooding than the same period the year before, records show. Across the rest of the county, sales volume was down 8%.

A February report from the nonprofit First Street Foundation, which studies how climate change affects real estate, projected more than 55 million Americans will move from areas with high climate risks by 2055, including about 5 million people this year.

The report used Tampa as a case study. It noted that even as the city’s population is projected to grow by more than 33% by 2055, property values could fall, spurred by spiking insurance costs that would be expected to push residents out. An anticipated 213% rise in property insurance premiums over the next three decades would drive property values down by nearly a quarter, the group projected.

(more)
https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2025/05/30/hurricane-climate-change-migration-flooding-florida-insurance/

[cato potatoe]

There is plenty of elevated real estate in the Tampa Bay region.  But guess where the expensive homes were built over the last 50 years.  Adjacent to a man made canal, in a reclaimed swamp, or a sand bar.

[mountaineer]

Did people move to Florida without considering the possibility of hurricanes?

[cato potatoe]

Did people move to Florida without considering the possibility of hurricanes?

Many of them were aware of the risk, but unprepared for the carrying cost of real estate.  My insurance is high because of the wind risk, but it's astronomical in a flood zone.  Then you have to anticipate property taxes, which have been locked into a 3% maximum annual increased assessment since 1992.  However, any transfer of deed resets the tax value to the market value, and the resultant tax is much higher than your neighbors are paying.  Often additional to this is an HOA fee, which is as reasonable as whoever gets elected to the board.  If it's midwestern retirees then you're probably going to be OK ... if it's condo commandos from NYC, then good luck.